


My Favorite Everything

by LeighKelly



Series: NYU!verse [6]
Category: Glee
Genre: F/F, Post-Canon, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-20 22:42:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4804886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeighKelly/pseuds/LeighKelly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With busy schedules, Brittany and Santana find themselves having to schedule time together. Studying for finals, Santana forgets and misses date night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Favorite Everything

Santana is tired. No, tired doesn’t even begin to describe it, really. She’s totally worn down, exhausted, asleep on her feet, mostly. Her final year of school started only five weeks ago, and already, she’s counting the days until Christmas break. That’s the price, she figures, for taking it as seriously as she does, total and complete exhaustion. It’s a price that will be well worth it, when she complete her colloquium, and has the connections with several prestigious members of the faculty, who may help her land a coveted job in creative licensing, but still, as it stands now, while she buries her head in an old Nielsen report on music market demographics, she just wants a nap, and more than an hour at home where she’s  _not_ sleeping on any given day.

Her wife, Brittany, with a full course load, including a teachers assistant position for a freshman math class that she finds painfully boring, has a schedule just as hectic. Her wife, who’s made the decision to accept NYU’s offer for her to attend graduate school, meaning they’ll be able to stay in their campus apartment, come spring, and also, essentially, that she’ll be guaranteed a job, if she wants it, once she finishes her phD (her  _phD,_ Santana still swells with pride, when she tells people that’s the track her wife is on). Her wife, who—Santana freezes in the midst of her thoughts, jumping from her seat on the third floor of the library, slamming her computer shut, and shoving her binder full of research into her bag.

“Shit. Shit. Shit.”

She doesn’t even bother to wait for the elevator. Instead, she breaks her own record getting down the steps, and when she reaches street level, she races the three blocks home in the crisp, cool October air, opting again, once she gets to their building, to forgo the elevator up, and to take more stairs. When she reaches the top, she’s winded and sweaty, her sweater riding up, and her hair entirely disheveled, but she’s home. She made it home, albeit, three hours late. She hasn’t even looked at her phone, but she knows, she’s  _definitely_ not walking into someone who’s happy with her. She opens the door, and there she finds Brittany, sitting on the couch in sweats and a tank top, calmly, too calmly, sipping a glass of red wine.

“Britt, I—” Santana tries to rush out the words, but Brittany simply shakes her head.

“It’s fine.” She speaks the words, but her intonation says the opposite. “Your dinner is in the microwave.”

Setting her backpack down on the floor by the door, Santana creeps into the kitchen, unsure of how to act around Brittany. She messed up, she knows that she did. They’d sat down and gone over their schedules meticulously, trying to find a day that actually worked for them to have dinner together, not in a lab, not outside the library, a real dinner, at their kitchen table, a night without work. When they’d settled on a date (how sad, really, they’d both conceded, that they had to  _schedule_ dinners together, but there was just a year left to go of this particular type of rat race), Brittany, who only had early classes on Friday, had insisted on cooking dinner. Now, Santana stands in the kitchen, noting the extinguished candles, the flowers on the table, the roast chicken in the microwave—something she’d told her wife she’d been dying for, a real, homestyle type of meal—and she knows, by forgetting about their plans, she fucked up, and she fucked up badly.

“Babe.” She starts, but the words die on her tongue when Brittany doesn’t even turn to look at her. The timer on the microwave beeps, but Santana’s stomach turns at the thought of eating what was supposed to be a romantic hours late and on her own. She sucks in a deep breath, and her voice lowers to a whisper. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m going to bed, I have papers to grade in the morning.”

Brittany doesn’t meet Santana’s eyes as she stands up and breezes past her toward the sink. The remaining contents of her glass of wine swirl down the drain, and she rinses the glass, leaving it to be washed in the morning. She’s not sure if she’s overreacting, really, but she’s had several hours of waiting to stew in her irritation, and it’s grown rapidly with every passing minute. She knows Santana is busy, and  _she_ is busy too. That’s why they’d planned this, a reprieve from the bustle, some time to just be together, since they know it will grow increasingly more difficult as the year progresses. But for Santana to just forget? To completely forget a night they’d both been do looking forward to? That stings Brittany, it stings her deeply.

Trying not to cry—because she’d be lying if she said she didn’t, once she hit the first hour mark, and she’d sent Santana two text messages, and actually began to  _worry_ —Brittany brushes her teeth and climbs into bed. Though there are many nights where she goes to bed before Santana, the bed feels cold somehow, like where she curls up into a ball, and where Santana will fall to rest whenever she decides to come in will be a whole world apart. Brittany hates when she’s mad. She hates that low ache in her stomach, the twinge behind her eyes, the conflicting feeling of wanting to be near the person she loves the most, while simultaneously wishing she was a hundred miles away. They don’t have screaming fights, it’s just not how they operate, they’re both too volatile that they might explode, so they fight quietly, like this. But the quiet, it doesn’t make it any less awful.

When Santana comes into the bedroom less than a half hour later, Brittany is still awake. Santana sighs, when she notices the lingerie tossed haphazardly in the corner of the bedroom, lingerie that Brittany must have been wearing, in anticipation of their night together. She goes into the bathroom, taking time for her nightly routine, and when she crawls into bed, she makes an effort to sidle up to Brittany, pressing into her from behind, resting her chin on Brittany’s shoulder, and just trying to bridge the distance between them.

“I’m trying to sleep, Santana. Not in the mood right now.” Brittany, she’s still not past the hurt of being forgotten. She physically shrugs off her wife, and Santana is taken aback by that.

“And I’m trying to apologize.”

“Good, great, it’s heard. But just because  _you’re_ ready to say it, that doesn’t mean I’m ready to accept it.”

“Brittany.” Santana begins, but then feels the burn of her wife’s reluctance to make up, and grabs her pillow. “Fine, I’ll just sleep on the couch then.”

“No one said you have to.” Brittany rolls her eyes, still keeping her face away from Santana. Where she was hurt, she’s becoming increasingly irritated by Santana’s annoyance with  _her_ for needing emotional space. “It’s a big bed, but if you can’t share with me without touching me, then fine, do what you want.”

“Good night.” Santana snaps a little, then slams the door as she exits the bedroom.

Santana settles herself on the couch beneath a throw blanket, and it simmers. Santana’s angry at herself, but she struggles with that, she always has. It’s easier to huff at Brittany and sleep on the couch when she rejects her efforts, even when she’s the one who caused the fight-not-fight to begin with. It’s easier for her to get mad, than to be upset that she missed her wife’s dinner and flowers and new lingerie. It’s easier, because anger is a more manageable territory for Santana Pierce-Lopez than disappointing Brittany. She doesn’t do that, not anymore, so the idea that she actually  _has_ unsettles her straight to the core.

It’s a restless night for both of them, they haven’t slept apart since the few weeks they’d been in different cities after returning from the vacation that rekindled their relationship nearly five years ago. Just after six, long before Santana gets up, Brittany leaves the house. Maybe it’s the coward’s way out, but she really  _does_ have papers to grade, being a teacher’s assistant means a host of additional responsibilities, and she needs them finished before she can continue to deal with the shittiness that is being annoyed at Santana. So she grabs a cup of coffee at Starbucks, and she goes to the park. She sits across from the men playing chess, her thinking spot, tucked among the turning leaves, and she pulls out her answer key. She draws it out, how long it takes to grade, because it’s nice to have the space, but she’s not sure she’d actually stay away from home if she wasn’t doing something important.    

Back in their apartment, a slightly subdued Santana wakes with a crick in her back from sleeping on the couch, and she’s reminded of the night before. Feeling far more guilty than angry at this point, she considers cleaning the house, but finds that Brittany already did it. Instead, she decides to pick up the phone, pointedly avoiding looking at the messages Brittany had sent her before she’d gotten home, and making reservations for dinner, sending out a text to her study group, saying she won’t make their late afternoon meeting. She feels terrible, really, and all she wants to do is make up the last fifteen hours to Brittany. After taking a shower, she pulls on jeans and her favorite sweatshirt of her wife’s, deeply inhaling her smell. Dressed for the day, she forgoes all but a little mascara, and pulls her hair up into a messy bun. She knows Brittany is in the park, it’s where she likes to study, or grade papers, so before Santana heads there, she grabs two pumpkin spice lattes and a croissant as a peace offering, hoping its at least a start to get Brittany talking to her again.

When she gets to the park, Santana immediately goes to Brittany’s favorite spot, the comparatively dingy northwest corner, where several old men are always looking for challengers in their chess game. Brittany had taken most of them for their money, and Santana always smirks when her unassuming blonde wife shows them how it’s done. They banter with her good-naturedly now, but though they challenge her to rematches, she won’t take their money again. And there she sits, the cap of a pen between her teeth, and a pencil tucked behind her ear. On the bench beside her, a folder full of papers lays weighted by her glasses case, and a crumpled granola bar wrapper sits atop it. Looking at her, Santana sucks in a breath, forever awed by her beauty, especially when she’s in her element like this, and feeling her presence, Brittany looks up from what she’s doing.

“Hi.” Santana says softly, shuffling her feet, and holding out one of the cups in her hand. “I just thought…”

“Thank you.” Brittany nods in appreciation, carefully taking the cup from Santana’s hand and drawing in a large sip. “I’ve been here like three hours, so I could really use it.”

“I’m…Britt, I’m really sorry about last night.”

“I know.” She sighs a little, then lifts the folder from the bench, offering Santana the seat, one she eagerly accepts. “And I’m sorry I wasn’t ready to work it out when you came to bed.”

"You had every right to be pissed at me.” Santana chews on her bottom lip, and Brittany ghosts her thumb over her chin, reminding her without words that one day she’s going to bite it off. “Do you think you’re ready to talk about it now?”

“I am. Can I talk first?”

“Yeah, no, of course, go ahead.” Santana fidgets in her seat, until Brittany places a reassuring hand on her knee.

“Baby, it’s  _me._ You don’t have to get yourself so worried over a conversation.”

“I know, but you’re upset, and I don’t like being the one who upset you.”

“I don’t like when we upset each other either, but we’re okay, alright?”

“Alright.” Santana’s head bobs up and down, and she places her hand on top of Brittany’s resting on her knee.

“I was upset, I still  _am_ a little upset about you forgetting about dinner last night.”

“I'm—”

“I know, you said you’d let me talk though.” Brittany cuts off another apology, and Santana allows her to continue. “I know we’re busy, trust me, I do. I know that maybe both of us in the programs we’re in was maybe over-ambitious, but we also both love them. The thing is though, Santana, I just, I don’t want to be that couple that doesn’t spend time together, that hardly ever talks, that ends up bickering like this…”

"We’re not that couple.” Santana speaks barely above a whisper.

“I know we’re not. But I  _hate_ that we had to schedule a meal together, because we hadn’t had one in almost three weeks. Then, when you didn’t come home, I don’t know, I just felt really crappy, and then being mad at you sucks, and like, does exactly the opposite of what I wanted.”

"You spent all day cooking, and the flowers, and I saw your lingerie in the bedroom.”

“That’s the thing though, Santana, it’s not even  _about_ any of that. I didn’t even care about the stupid lingerie or the chicken, or any of it. I just miss you, and I know it’s crazy, but when you forgot, I just made me feel like, like, I don’t know…unwanted. I know it’s ridiculous, I know you want me, but it just felt shitty to eat our dinner by myself, and not know where you were.”

"Britt, I miss you too. I miss you so much. Please don’t think that last night was because I feel it any less. I was so stupid, I got caught up in these marketing numbers that are part of the reason we even  _have_  to schedule time together, and I got so focused on it, that I just…I didn’t even realize what day it was, I guess. Every time I’m in the apartment alone for dinner, or I’m in a late study group or a meeting with my advisor, and I know  _you’re_ there alone, I hate it. Everyone told us getting married and being in college together was going to be  _really_ hard, since the first years of marriage are hard as it is, but I think, mostly, we’ve done a really good job.”

“Yeah, we have.” She accepts, tilting her head a little to look at Santana’s earnest face. “I love you so much, and I love this life that we’re starting to build together. I don’t know, we’ve been doing this for three years, I know that this is what it is, but it’s weird, when we talked about how much fun it would be to be back in school together, I guess I didn’t really think it was going to be this.”

“Neither did I.” Santana admits, feeling Brittany’s hand move from her knee, so it can snake around her waist, pulling her closer. “But I like that we have different interests.”

“Oh, I do too. It definitely keeps our conversation interesting.”

“And I have my human computer who can analyze marketing data like nobody’s business.” Santana teases a little, her heart racing, when a smile comes to Brittany’s face. “But Britt, I think, even putting aside how badly I messed up last night, we  _do_ need to set aside more us time. Like, I don’t know, we should be having dinner together at  _least_ once a week, no matter how busy we are, and trying to go to bed together more than that.”

“Are you talking about scheduling sex?” Brittany has to laugh at the idea, something she never would have imagined, not in her wildest dreams.

“Oh God,  _no!”_ Santana snorts into her coffee. “I refuse to resort to that, babe. Somehow, even without seeing each other, we  _still_ manage to keep our sex life on point.”

“I’ve been saying for years that early morning sex is the best sex.”

“As always, you were right.” She smiles, and Brittany can’t help but press a soft kiss to her temple. “I mean, we can totally have sex at night when we go to bed together, but I just meant that I like falling asleep with you, instead of creeping in late and trying not to wake you up, or rolling over for a mostly-asleep kiss when it’s you who comes in. I like cuddling with you, listening to your heartbeat, feeling your fingers on my skin, laughing about our days…”

“You’re really something else, Santana.” Brittany can’t help but shake her head a little. “And I’m really glad we’re not fighting anymore.”

“Me too, so much. And I made reservations at Perla tonight, I was hoping you’d let me make last night up to you.”

“Don’t you have study group though?”

“I told them I wasn’t going to make it. I study enough, and I think something else is more important right now. Our marriage,  _you,_ you mean more than anything to me. So, I just, I think I’m taking today off entirely, and I’m hoping you’ll spend it with me.” Santana raises her eyebrows, hopefully, and Brittany takes a cheek in her hand, just holding her wife’s face and looking into her eyes.

“Maybe you could cancel the reservations.” Brittany suggests, making Santana’s face fall.

“Babe, I’m not going to go to study group. I mean, even if you’re not into hanging out—“

“Santana Pierce-Lopez.” Brittany can’t help but laugh. “Did you miss the whole conversation we just had? Of  _course_ I want to hang out with you. And you know Perla is my favorite restaurant, but you’re my favorite  _everything,_ so I think, especially because we have an entire day together, and you reminded me of all the little things I miss, I think I just want to hang out with you at home. Watch a movie, order takeout, drink wine, and have awesome nighttime sex. Just being close to you, I guess. I mean, if your heart is set on going out—”

“I love you.” Santana catches Brittany’s lips with her own. “And I think I like your idea  _much_ better.”


End file.
